Advice on AC router

[Lost Dog]

Ok, I am in the market for a new wireless router. I've been running my WRT54GL for years now with Tomato firmware. I'm a huge fan of this firmware and 90% of the systems in my house are linux based... I like to tinker.

I was ready to purchase the Asus RT-AC68U today but then read the review here seeing it falls short in performance compared to the Netgear R7000. Now I'm unsure...

What interested me about the Asus was the Merlin firmware and I've been somewhat gun shy of Netgear products after having several switches die on me. Now I'm not so sure....

I have ~20 different components that connect either wired or wifi in my house... from servers to laptops to my MythTV system. With my WRT54GL I've been running OpenVPN for when I'm on the road and I also use a ssh tunnel for my web traffic when I'm not at home and I don't want to have everything go through the OpenVPN.

I'm interested in being able to do the same thing but with much higher performance. My OpenVPN and ssh rates are pretty poor based on the encryption used and the low end processor of the 54GL. The 1Ghz dual core in the R7000 has me leaning towards that.

I guess all that being said, is the R7000 right for me? Does the stock firmware allow ssh sessions? Can I tunnel my traffic through ssh? If not, is DD-WRT gonig to meet my needs? I used DD-WRT years ago on my 54GL but moved to Tomato based on it being a much better experience....

I have the money for either the AC68U or the N7000 and to be honest I'm really more interested in the higher end CPU than the AC... but the AC is a good addition as I upgrade components in my house.

Thoughts?

 

[sfx2000]

Any modern router is going to provide a better experience - the old Linky WRT54G had its day, but that day is long past...

For OpenVPN - better off to host the server side on something other than a home/consumer grade router - they just don't have the horsepower to do it reasonably well.

Setting up a linux or BSD box inside your LAN, and port forwarding out from the router is a better solution - and there you can have your SSH tunnel option as well.

 

[stevech]

I'd skip today's 11ac routers, esp. if you don't have 11ac clients. Wait a year for products to interpret the standard correctly, and for your clients to be 11ac capable.

 

[Lost Dog]

I'd skip today's 11ac routers, esp. if you don't have 11ac clients. Wait a year for products to interpret the standard correctly, and for your clients to be 11ac capable.

I've struggled with this thought. Everything now is Draft 11ac (as far as I can tell). Once it's ratified and no longer "draft" will components with the final 11ac hardware / software be backwards compatible.

Never an easy decision..... Ok.. then if I go with a standard 11n router what has the most powerful chipset in the consumer level? Any dual core 11n routers? To be honest, any video streaming I'm doing will be on the wired connection. The wireless speed while nice is not my first criteria.

Is the RT-N66U the way to go at this point?

 

[L&LD]

At least the Asus RT-AC68U is WiFi certified.

http://www.asus.com/News/RhRGRF9xiiVPIG1y


Does that not mean it is not 'draft'?

 

[sinshiva]

I've struggled with this thought. Everything now is Draft 11ac (as far as I can tell). Once it's ratified and no longer "draft" will components with the final 11ac hardware / software be backwards compatible.

Never an easy decision..... Ok.. then if I go with a standard 11n router what has the most powerful chipset in the consumer level? Any dual core 11n routers? To be honest, any video streaming I'm doing will be on the wired connection. The wireless speed while nice is not my first criteria.

Is the RT-N66U the way to go at this point?

The n66 is probably more stable at this point. Everybody is working hard to get the AC routers up to speed, though. I do not believe it's draft AC, but having been around here for some time now, it appears the firmware isn't quite 100%, yet.

I do like the idea of a dual core router, but if you don't intend to stream off a harddrive attached to the router, the N66 is quite powerful. It took the place of my DIY 1.x ghz Pentium3 router after the mobo finally died. I use mine exclusively as a router and openvpn server, runs fantastically.

The dual core router would give you nice performance with an EXT4 formatted drive, though. EXT4 is pretty.

 

[Lost Dog]

The n66 is probably more stable at this point. Everybody is working hard to get the AC routers up to speed, though. I do not believe it's draft AC, but having been around here for some time now, it appears the firmware isn't quite 100%, yet.

I do like the idea of a dual core router, but if you don't intend to stream off a harddrive attached to the router, the N66 is quite powerful. It took the place of my DIY 1.x ghz Pentium3 router after the mobo finally died. I use mine exclusively as a router and openvpn server, runs fantastically.

The dual core router would give you nice performance with an EXT4 formatted drive, though. EXT4 is pretty.

I'm still pondering this... Here's a question though. What about the RT-AC56U? On Amazon it's the same price as the N66 (actually, $5 cheaper) and uses the same Broadcom BCM4708A0 as the RT-AC68U. I don't care about the AC at this point but do have a number of N based cards in the house.

With the AC56U I'd get the better processor and USB 3.0 (I do have some 3.0 devices) for less than the slower processor N66.

Am I missing something here?!?!

Thanks for all your help!

 

[sinshiva]

i think that the ac56 along with the ac68 both support ext4 whereas the ac66 does not, if i am remember things right. i'm sure it would be a good router.

 

[Lost Dog]

i think that the ac56 along with the ac68 both support ext4 whereas the ac66 does not, if i am remember things right. i'm sure it would be a good router.

I've read up more on the AC56 and people complain about poor range and issues with the N-band. At this point I think I'm just going to pick up the N66 and call it good. With the money I save I'll put towards a server upgrade...

If I can find a decent low wattage mini-itx board with an AES supported processor I'll be gold. That will take care of my server which can do the ssh tunnel and openVPN. The router can focus on routing...

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Lost Dog]

An update...

I ended up going with the RT-N66R (picked it up at Best Buy as it was the same price as Amazon). So far so good. I thought I had an issue until I discovered the router password can only be a maximum of 16 characters long. Mine was a few longer but there was no indication it was limited to 16. When I tried to log on I entered my full password and it would not let me log on. When I used the first 16 characters it was fine.

I immediately flashed the latest Merlin build and have been playing around with that. I'll be backing up those settings then load on a Tomato build to compare the two (I was using Tomato on my previous router).

So far, everything is blazing fast and I'm really happy!